Publications

Articles by Mark Graban and/or Joe Swartz

• Putting the ‘Continuous’ Back into Health Care Improvement, Mark Graban and Gregory Jacobson, MD, Quality Digest.
• Six Sigma Forum Magazine (ASQ), with Joe Swartz, “Healthcare Kaizen: Daily Continuous Improvement, From Hypothesis to Proven Practice,” November 2012.
• Global Business and Organizational Excellence, “Sharing Improvements in Health Care Processes Saves Lives at Franciscan Alliance,” April 2013.
• Industrial Engineer Magazine, “Good Change: Using kaizen toward a culture of continuous improvement humanizes the healthcare workforce for better outcomes,” February 2014 (cover story).
• See more by Mark Graban

Books by Our Gurus & Teachers

Our book and work is influenced heavily by two giants in the study and promotion of Kaizen:

Masaaki Imai (author of our book’s foreword):

• Kaizen: The Key To Japan’s Competitive Success (1986)
• Gemba Kaizen: A Commonsense, Low-Cost Approach to Management (1997) – Second Edition (2012)

• The Idea Generator: Quick and Easy Kaizen (2001)
• How to do Kaizen: A new path to innovation – Empowering everyone to be a problem solver (2010)

Other Kaizen Books

• One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, by Robert Maurer, PhD
• The Toyota Way to Continuous Improvement: Linking Strategy and Operational Excellence to Achieve Superior Performance, by Jeffrey K. Liker, PhD and James K. Franz
• Ideas Are Free: How the Idea Revolution Is Liberating People and Transforming Organizations, by Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder
• The Idea-Driven Organization: Unlocking the Power in Bottom-Up Ideas, by Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder
• Innovative Lean: A Guide to Releasing the Untapped Gold in Your Organisation to Engage Employees, Drive Out Waste, and Create Prosperity (includes healthcare case studies), by Andy Brophy and John Bicheno.

Other Healthcare Improvement Books

• Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Engagement, Second Edition, by Mark Graban
• On the Mend: Revolutionizing Healthcare to Save Lives and Transform the Industry, by John Toussaint, MD and Roger Gerard, PhD
• Leading the Lean Healthcare Journey: Driving Culture Change to Increase (Seattle Children’s Hospital)
• Transforming Health Care: Virginia Mason Medical Center’s Pursuit of the Perfect Patient Experience (Virginia Mason Medical Center)
• Beyond Heroes: A Lean Management System for Healthcare, by KIm Barnas
• The Pittsburgh Way to Efficient Healthcare: Improving Patient Care Using Toyota Based Methods, by Naida Grunden

Academic Papers

• Kaizen: A Method of Process Improvement in the Emergency Department , by Gregory H. Jacobson, MD, Nicole Streiff McCoin, MD, Richard Lescallette, Stephan Russ, MD, MPH, and Corey M. Slovis, MD (Academic Emergency Medicine).
• Lean thinking in emergency departments: A critical review. Holden, R.J., Annals of Emergency Medicine, 57:265-278, 2011.